Chapter 94

"Stop being silent."

Fury stayed silent.

"If you don't talk, I'm going to mind control you and make you make pirate noises."

A few seconds passed, and the door was booted in. A metallic cylinder bounced against the floor and, with a flick of his hand, Harry knocked it back into the corridor. With a flash of light and a tremendous bang, it exploded.


One of the men outside staggered through the doorway dizzily, and then slipped and bashed his helmeted head against the wall. A flick of Harry's wand rendered him unconscious.


Harry glanced at Fury. "Where do you hire these people?" He waved his wand and put the door back into place. "Anyway, I'm here to negotiate a peace treaty."

Boots and battering rams pounded against the magically sealed door.

"As you can see," Harry said, "I have no experience whatsoever negotiating peace. I normally just kill all of my enemies. Unfortunately, every single person on Earth seems to dislike Loki and I can't kill everyone—well, I suppose I could but it would be a lot of effort and Midgard is my favourite realm—you have the best ice cream and the best explosives."

Fury continued to glare with his one eye.

"You don't understand?" Harry paused. "I'm really not sure how to say that in pirate. Will your Matrix trench coat let you download English so that you understand me?"

"I understand you."

"Are we going to negotiate now, or are you going to continue being stroppy?" he said. "And don't say, 'the US government doesn't negotiate with terrorists.' I'm not a terrorist. That was Loki. And he was being mind-controlled."

Fury raised an eyebrow. "Mind-controlled?"

"Yes, like this. Imperio."

The next thing Fury knew, he was performing a solo ballet around the room.

From Fury's chair, Harry clapped. "Bravo! Bravo! Wonderful performance! Now, are you going to cooperate or am I going to have to magic up a stripper pole?"

"I was cooperating."

'He was,' Loki confirmed.

"Oh." Harry frowned. "Well, you can never be too cautious."

'Of course not. Let's stab him with a stake to make sure he's not a vampire.'

'Can't you see the trench coat? He's clearly not a vampire—he's a half-vampire vampire hunter.'

'I think we should stab him anyway,' Loki said. 'Just to be safe.'

'This is why I'm the diplomat. Well, this and you not having a body.'

"Anyway," Harry said aloud, "now we have that sorted, I assume you can pass on the message to all of the governments of the world to stop trying to attack Loki, because it wasn't his fault."

"I—"

"You may or may not have noticed that I am a wizard, and am probably the most powerful being currently on Earth. I'd take that into consideration in your answer."

Fury glared at him. "From what I've seen, wizards tend to die when they get shot through the head."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I'm not just a wizard."

With a wave of his wand, he disabled his protections on the door and it was immediately kicked in. Black-clad men charged in, guns roaring as soon as Fury was out of their line of fire.

Harry stood still, unflinching as the hailstorm of bullets struck him. He winked at Fury and moved forward, too fast for his target to react before his gun was wrenched from his grip and bent in half. Grabbing the man by his collar, Harry lifted him up and flung him forwards.

The man barrelled into his comrades, sending them crashing to the floor and halting their attempts to extract Fury.

Even as they collapsed to the floor, a new attacker was dashing into the room, a metal shield held before him. With a roll of his eyes, Harry side-stepped Captain America's charge. A flick of his wand later, Captain America was unconscious and stuck to the ceiling, with his shield was stuck to the wall.

Fury attempted to crawl from the room, only to be yanked back in by an invisible force around his ankle. The same invisible force pushed the rest of the agents back out into the corridor. Harry waved his hand and a wall of ice rose to reseal the doorway.

"Did you see that, Fury?" Harry summoned a gun to his hand, aimed at the side of his own head, and fired twice. "I'm not dead." He laughed. "It doesn't even hurt—but that could be a result of nerve damage from constant substance abuse."

"I—"

"I know, I know, drugs are bad. Blah, blah, blah. 'You're already too confident without the cocaine, Harry. Don't snort semtex, Harry. Cyanide isn't for recreational use, Harry. Drinking gasoline is bad for you, Harry.' Just let me have my teenage rebellion, okay? Besides, it's all basically legal now I have my diplomatic immunity."

"You know, good diplomacy usually doesn't involve appearing in their office."

Harry snorted. "I didn't appear. I was there before you were. You just didn't notice me because I was in your blind spot—to your left, that is."

Fury glared at Harry—that seemed to be a habit of his.

"Do you not get the joke? Are you blind to its meaning?" Harry chuckled to himself. "Anyway, I assume that you're going to stop looking for Loki. And you're not even going to attempt to look for me. If you do, I'm going to go and mind control someone, and get them to launch a nuke right at the White House, okay?"

"You really don't have much experience with this diplomacy stuff, do you?"

Harry frowned. "How could you tell? Is it because you can sense my nervousness?"

"Something like that."

"Do you have any diplomacy tips?"

"Don't threaten the most powerful organisation in the world."

Harry scratched his chin. "Well, I wasn't really planning on threatening McDonalds anytime soon, but okay." He chuckled to himself. "I'm so funny."

"The US government—"

"—does not negotiate with terrorists. Yes, yes, I've seen action films too, and don't care if that's not what you were going to say. I'm not a terrorist—well, that depends on your definition of terrorist, but it sure as hell would make life a lot easier for you if you just cooperate with my demands."

"I'm sure it would."